A landslide victory for Japan’s party of near-permanent opposition has turned the country’s political scene on its head, and the country’s climate change policy along with it. The poll result has implications for landmark international climate talks in Copenhagen in three months.
The Democratic Party of Japan, led by Yukio Hatoyama, has convincingly won national elections on the weekend, as polls predicted, ending for now the domination of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party that has governed Japan for 53 of the last 54 years.
Amid deep recession and disenchantment with the LDP under former prime minister Taro Aso, Hatoyama campaigned on a progressive agenda that appears to have won over the electorate - abolishing higher education fees, increasing child support, setting minimum pensions aand a minimum wage for farmers as well as calling for a more equal, less subservient alliance with the United States.
Also a key part of the DMJ’s election manifesto were green reforms, including the promise to lift Japan’s 2020 target to reduce greenhouse emissions to 25 per cent below 1990 levels. The LDP had set a target the equivalent of 8 per cent cuts on 1990, attracting criticism internationally for falling well short of UN scientists’ call for cuts of 25 to 40 per cent.
If Hatoyama keeps to his word on the target, this will increase political pressure on the United States and other non-European developed nations which have so far committed to cuts of less than 20 per cent. This in turn has entrenched a stalemate among developed and developing nations that is preventing a new global climate change agreement and is set to come to a head at UN talks in Copenhagen.
The prime minister-elect is due to attend a US-led summit on climate change on September 22 in New York and address the UN General Assembly the next day.
Hatoyama has also promised to create a mandatory domestic emissions trading scheme, something the former government had baulked at in recent years, introduce a "feed-in" tariff for renewable energy supply, and set a renewable energy target of 10 per cent of primary energy supply by 2020.
Alex Steffen, executive editor of online sustainability website Worldchanging and formerly an environment journalist in Japan, describes the result as “pretty thrilling”.
“While there are huge structural and cultural barriers to progress on climate and other environmental issues, the Japanese also have enormous innovative capacities that the world needs brought to bear on sustainability challenges. A Japan committed to transforming itself into a bright green powerhouse is good news for us all.”
Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the US Natural Resources Defense Council, warned that the new government would face a big challenge getting its climate policy implemented in the face of deep-rooted opposition inthe bureaucracy and business sector.
"You won't see a wholesale switch. They will still have to deal with concerns of industries and with ministries that have very different views on climate change and that are very strong," Schmidt told the New York Times on the eve of the election.
New York Times 28/8/09, Reuters 30/8/09, The Australian, Telegraph 31/8/09
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